Specters of Male Violence in “Especially Heinous” and What the Constitution Means to Me

When I was growing up my mom often repeated a warning to my sister and me about men. Usually it was prompted by something a male character did in a television show or movie we were watching, but I think she also recited it when she and my dad were discussing the way a man had mistreated a female colleague or extended family member at the dinner table. She warned us that not every man we meet would be as trustworthy as our dad and our poppop. Sometimes she didn’t put our other grandfather or our uncles in this category of trustworthy men, which I don’t think reflects on their character; rather, she knew that even the men closest to us often have the potential to betray us.

As I gathered my thoughts to write this entry, I called my mom to see what she could remember about this speech. She didn’t recollect many details, but she could recall her state of mind and the reason she felt she had to speak so candidly to us. She said, “I knew there would always be segments of the population that would take advantage of you.” This remark stirred a strange mix of tenderness and sorrow for her in me. She was so wise and thoughtful to issue us this warning, but I regretted that her fear of our being abused by men was a burden she had to carry. I imagine all good parents worry that their children might get hurt, but there must be a specific anguish that the mothers of daughters experience; they are acutely aware of male cruelty because they have experienced it for themselves, and they know what is in store for their daughters.

In What the Constitution Means to Me and “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU,” Heidi Schreck and Carmen Maria Machado explore what effects this constant specter of male violence has on women.

Machado’s “Especially Heinous,” is a short story (so long it could really be classified as a novella) that takes the form of episode descriptions of Law & Order SVU. The synopses start out resembling the real episodes of SVU and gradually veer into a storyline of Machado’s invention. The lead detective on the show, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), begins to be haunted by the ghosts of young female victims from her cases as well as doppelgängers of her partner, Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), and herself called “Abler” and “Henson.” Benson also becomes sensitive to the New York pavement beneath her, which breathes and pulses with life:

Benson doesn’t know how to explain to Stabler the heartbeat beneath the ground. She is certain that she can hear it all the time now, deep and low… Benson takes taxis to faraway neighborhoods, gets down on her hands and knees on the street and the sidewalk and, once, in a woman’s vegetable garden that took up her entire postage-stamp lawn. She can hear it everywhere. The drumming, echoing, echoing in the deep. (78)

Every time Benson flips her bedroom light on and off, she hears the sound. Dum-dum. She feels it in her teeth. (114) 

For Machado’s Benson, the specter of violence against women is manifested in a persistent heartbeat, which is startlingly similar to a metaphor from Schreck’s What the Constitution Means to Me.

In Constitution, Schreck recreates the Constitutional debate competitions she participated in as a teenager to earn money for her college tuition. One component of these competitions challenged the participants to describe a personal connection to the Constitution, which Schreck does by tying the document to four generations of women in her family. She navigates the ins and outs of the Constitution and its silence on women and weaves her observations into a narrative about the history of domestic violence endured by her female family members. The result is a compelling argument that this reiterative male violence results in a generational trauma inherited by the women in her family. 

In the following excerpt, Schreck speaks about how she must make an effort to forget the staggering statistics that she learned about violence against women just to survive her days:

Schreck claims that whether women are aware of the numbers or not, they must instinctually recognize the constant threat of male violence; they can feel that truth “humming” all around them. How could they not be aware of it? After all, it was male violence on screen that started most of those conversations with my mom. Machado critiques this saturation of gendered violence in the media in “Especially Heinous”; the dum-dum noise that haunts Benson is a heartbeat, but it is also the sound effect that opens every episode of SVU—an eerie noise that portends the violence that will be recounted in the storyline that follows it.

Both writers conceive of this omnipresent danger as different kinds of vibration. (Bear with me as I attempt an extended physics metaphor.) There are two kinds of vibrations: free and forced. Free vibrations create only a temporary disturbance in a system, like two cymbals crashing together a single time. Gradually, the amplitude of the vibrations diminishes, and the system returns to equilibrium. Forced vibrations occur when there is a continuous disturbance to a system, like the rumbling of a car engine. A phenomenon called resonance happens in some cases of forced vibrations, which results in a quick uptake of energy by the vibrating system and simultaneous growth of the vibration amplitude. In rare instances, the power of resonance can be destructive, such as when British soldiers marched in unison across the Broughton Suspension Bridge in 1831, resulting in the structure’s collapse beneath their feet.

I find Schreck’s and Machado’s vibrational metaphors for the unrelenting specter male violence apt because in exceptional circumstances—just like the Broughton Suspension bridge—the cumulative stress that comes from being always aware of that danger can make a woman break down.

If you have Amazon Prime you can watch a filmed performance of What the Constitution Means to Me here and “Especially Heinous” is available to read for free on The American Reader’s website here.